If columnist Charles Davenport Jr. is going to construct a column around a quotation from a Supreme Court justice, he ought at least to get the right justice (March 8) [not posted].
The oft-cited "The Constitution is colorblind" quote comes from the famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson by Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan (the elder), a post-bellum abolitionist from Kentucky, and not from anything written by Chief Justice John Marshall, an antebellum slave owner from Virginia.
Moreover, Harlan was expressing a personal ideal and not a fact. The Constitution was notoriously not colorblind in its acknowledgement of the evil institution of slavery, e.g., Article I, sec. 2, representation in Congress based on "three-fifths of all other persons."
In one of those ironies of history, the famous Plessy dissent of 1895 (which would become the law of the land in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education) was penned by Harlan on the very same writing desk used years earlier by Chief Justice Taney to draft the notorious Dred Scott decision.
James H. Jeffries III
Greensboro
Comments (1)
James,
Great letter. I'll take your word for it as to its accuracy. I just wanted to let you know that I love Davenport's columns. When I read his stuff I get filled with hope. If this guy can make money writing, then anybody looking for work has got to have a chance.
One day he should take his well-worn thesaurus and look up the word "logic". Sorry, a little mean.
Posted by yaker | March 14, 2005 9:11 PM